Microsoft went through a blogger’s private Hotmail account in order to trace the identity of a source who allegedly leaked trade secrets.

(Also, how creepy is the name of Microsoft’s “Trustworthy Computing Investigations” department?)

I don’t know why I see people lambasting Microsoft for this and advising people to leave Hotmail for Gmail, then patting Google on the back for today’s completely unrelated (and long overdue) discontinuation of unencrypted connections. Google shouldn’t have been allowing unencrypted connections before today anyway — what year is this? — and they still store all of your email without any protection from them (or any secret “national security” demands that they may be forced to comply with).

You won’t fix problems like this Microsoft debacle long-term by moving from Hotmail to Gmail. If your email contains or will ever contain sensitive information, you shouldn’t be using a free webmail service whose entire business model relies on analyzing your mail’s content for advertising purposes.

I continue to recommend buying your own domain and pointing it at either your own IMAP server or a dedicated, paid, standard IMAP host. (I’ve used Fastmail for 7 years and have no complaints.)